I LOVE, I PRAY, I WRITE, I WORK HARD, I DREAM, I HAVE FAITH

A Dream Come True: Scholarship to Holland

I don’t like having teary eyes when I hug my friend to say “all the best in life”. I don’t like the moment I hide the sadness by smiling. I don’t like seeing my receptionist hotel remember my sad moment when we chatted for the last time. I don’t like many friends calling and coming to say goodbye and gave me souvenirs. I don’t like having a friend coming this late to gave me cheese. I don’t like walking hand in hand with my best friend in this snowy cold night from cafe to hotel and talk about life, marriage, and PhD plan. I don’t like seeing my room empty. It makes me feel empty. I don’t like knowing my best friend tried to call me yesterday to say goodbye and I was not in my room. I don’t like seeing my supervisor’s eyes got teary when she received my flower. I don’t like knowing my supervisor still making an effort to come to my place this late just to drop my medical report that is left in his souvenir bag I gave him this afternoon. I don’t like leaving my new family. I don’t like goodbye. I don’t like today.

It was 2 weeks before my thesis submission that my supervisors had the idea to change the direction. If you a reader of my blog you will know when my thesis direction has changed and I was happy. Indeed, I was excited knowing that my passionwill be included as the main objective.

Until 3 days before the submission. I had a confusion about what I need to analyse in my final analysis to reach that main goal. Apparently, the supervisor also did not have the good idea and asked me to “guess” what could be the analysis. Guessing… is not a research.

2 day before the submission I worked like crazy. I sent my chapters to supervisor from the morning until the office hour’s over. Maybe they knew I was panic, they responded to my chapters right away. At night, my supervisor came to my hotel, and we had a small discussion regarding the last analysis could be. I was surprised that he came and spent his time to talk to his students, not only me..but there are another two. He was a really gentleman.

1 day before the submission, I tried to think for the whole night without sleeping of what should be my final conclusions. My heart was literally squeezed that night, my breath was hard, and I said “Astargfirullah” many many times while I wrote and the felt stuck. It was a horrible night.

The day of submission came. I was still awake and working on my conclusion, adding my abstract, and revised here and there. I had a quick review of my last analysis and still not sure whether it is logic or not. And My supervisor still gave comments in my abstract 3 hours before submission. That was the last work I did.

When I submitted the thesis, I kind of felt lost of what I just submitted. My mind still kept on thinking about the analysis and my fingers were eager to type another paragraph, but I faced the reality that I can’t do that anymore. It’s finished. My heart was broken because I felt not optimal in my main analysis.

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Days after that.. I still tried to deal with disappointment. Deal that I did not have an extension working day even for one day. One day I accepted the thesis the way it was and tried to not think any single thing about it for days and went to Berlin. But still.. I need to deal with that feeling again when I took the hardcopy of my thesis before defense. I did not open my thesis for two days. Indeed, it was hard to move on from the bad feeling.

I finally pulled myself together with all the brave left. I opened my thesis and tried to judged my own work for defense preparation. It was a slow process to finally I had a courage to read my “poor” analysis. But, I did eventually. I read it and had a presentation rehearsals with my friends and I thought it’s ok.. I can defend my analysis.

Until the night before my defense. I was crying of fear, panic, and felt disappoint with myself. I can’t think. I just knew that I need to sleep. Then I slept.

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The defense day has come. My hands were cold and I tried to keep calm and confident. I presented and defended my thesis in front of committee that consists of my two supervisors, chairman, external examiner, and observer. I was shaking at first but I I could control myself in the middle of presentation. I was not able to answer the questions from the external examiner well. I knew it. It was the result if the direction has changer 2 weeks before submission. But for the rest I think I can answer quite well. I think..

Finally the committee asked me to come to the room for the announcement..